Morality of Using a Nuclear Weapon

[Capuchinfan1337]

It is permissible to use nuclear weapons in extreme situations where it is necessary for self-defence, or against an entirely military target (i.e. nuking a small military base on a secluded island in the Pacific, if it represents a serious danger.)

I agree with the poster above me in that nukes should not be used against civilian populations except in very extreme circumstances, but not that they are objectively immoral.

What about Hiroshima and Nagasaki which were both civilian cities and targets?

 

[dshix]

What about Hiroshima and Nagasaki which were both civilian cities and targets?

There are many differing opinions on this particular instance, so I only voice my own opinion.

I believe that the bombing of those two cities was immoral in itself, but I also recognize that if the bombings had no occured, the war with Japan may have gone on for a very, very long time, considering the fact that the Japanese were a nation willing to fight to the death, until the very last bit of their power had been destroyed.

Let’s just say I’m glad I didn’t have the decision. However, if I was given the choice as to whether or not the nukes should have been shot, I would not shoot them, because under no circumstances is it right to get a good end by evil means.

 

[Monte_RCMS]

There are many differing opinions on this particular instance, so I only voice my own opinion.

I believe that the bombing of those two cities was immoral in itself, but I also recognize that if the bombings had no occured, the war with Japan may have gone on for a very, very long time, considering the fact that the Japanese were a nation willing to fight to the death, until the very last bit of their power had been destroyed.

Let’s just say I’m glad I didn’t have the decision. However, if I was given the choice as to whether or not the nukes should have been shot, I would not shoot them, because under no circumstances is it right to get a good end by evil means.

It is also possible that the Japanese Army and Navy could have built a usable nuclear weapon if the U.S. had not forced the Japanese to surrender. There are persistent stories that the Japanese Navy did fire a test nuclear weapon right at the end of the war. It was built in Korea, right near the present location of the North Korean nuclear weapons facility, near Wonson.

The Japanese Navy also had three HUGE I-400 class submarines that carried three bomber aircraft in a very large hangar on deck; so they could have been used to deliver the weapon to the United States mainland. And they could have put one in a submarine, gotten under the U.S. invasion fleet and detonated it, thereby wiping out the U.S. Navy in the Pacific.

 

[Monte_RCMS]

Not only that. The USSR was sponsoring proxy wars and communist revolutions all over the globe under the protection of its nuclear umbrella. As for bombing the missile sites, the USAF told JFK that they could get most of them, but they could not guarantee that they would get all of them. And the missiles were under direct control of the Russian commanders in Cuba, who could have launched them if they felt threatened. Bombing the missile sites would have killed Russians and might have led to war with Russia.

The purpose of deterrence is to make sure that nobody gets a bomb off.

When we had 1150 ICBM’s that was a pretty serious deterrent. Now we’re down to 450 and maybe declining further. I don’t know how many China has. I don’t know how many Russia has. But there comes a point when deterrence is no longer credible if a nation lets its capability decline or shows it is not serious in maintaining it. **That could lead to war through nuclear blackmail. **

Nuclear weapons are easy to hide. I have no idea whether Russia is abiding by all the SALT treaties, and I’m not sure if we have the capability to know for certain. Universal disarmament might be the ideal, but how would anyone know that some or many nations might simply hide their nukes to be brought out at a more propitious time. I sure wouldn’t want to be the diplomat responsible for getting rid of the last U.S. nuclear weapon only to discover later that there were dozens or scores still hidden by Russia, China, Iran or other nations.

It’s true that nuclear weapons do not discriminate between combatants and non-combatants. Neither do any other weapons, even including drones, which nearly always kill some non-combatants.

The U.S. and Russia (even China?) could agree to get rid of all the nuclear weapons tomorrow, and maybe by some miracle actually do it and be able to verify it, (which I doubt). But that would not rid the world of nuclear weapons. And it might even make the use of nuclear weapons more likely since the lesser powers would no longer fear the big nuclear nations.

Nuclear blackmail is a very real possibility.

We have no idea how many nuclear weapons China has or where they might be hidden. Or Iran. Or Pakistan.

Former Senator Jon Kyl [R- Arizona] wrote in the Wall Street Journal, March 22, 2013, p A15, that both America’s strategic missile defense and nuclear deterrent are in peril.

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323415304578370783312615740.html

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303816504577311601745664294.html

or just Google: " kyl wsj " Print them out; because without a subscription you can only read them one time.

Even in their weakened condition, the Russians are rapidly upgrading their nuclear forces and the Chinese are rapidly building theirs.

The U.S. has no civil defense and the Boston Bombing demonstrated that even two ill-equipped terrorists were able to freeze the Boston region for a whole week.

Our missile defense consists of merely a handful of inferior kinetic interceptors.

The “Zero Option” [or “Global Zero”] calls for unilateral U.S. nuclear disarmament.

Imagine a situation in which a nuclear power ( or a group under the UN) decides to occupy the United States. After all, we have outstanding food growing conditions, plenty of coal, oil, natural gas, and other natural resources … timber, copper, etc …

Undeterred by our non-existent nuclear weapons and obsolete delivery and defense systems, the war against us would be very short.

The invader, meeting opposition on the ground from a conventionally-armed citizenry and military, could simply draw back and explode one nuclear weapon over one American city. It could then announce that, if its forces meet with further resistance and casualties, another city will be destroyed.

In this case, the American people themselves would disarm the opposition who continued to oppose the invaders.

All that is required for this strategy to succeed is for the U.S. to have no credible nuclear deterrent with which to retaliate against the invader’s homeland — and for the invaders to be sufficiently brutal to kill a few hundred thousand or so U.S. civilians with no civil defense.

John Kyle is in a position to know these facts and he writes that the situation is dire.

An invading army is not reasonable? We have 11 million illegal undocumented aliens here. If only 1% of those were “sleeper cell members”, that would be 110,000 potential soldiers.

And China has already been caught smuggling in containers of AK-47’s.

Not to mention all of the gangs here from Russia and Central America.

What is worse is that there are many different scenarios … and in all of them, we lose.

 

[JimG]

Thanks for those links. Yes, this quote from Kyl in the WSJ certainly worries me:
“Intercontinental ballistic missiles are the first leg of the triad. Although Russia is preparing to field a new generation of intercontinental ballistic missiles (one type of which can carry as many as 15 warheads), the Obama administration is still studying whether to develop its own modernized ICBMs.”

U.S. ICBM’s now have only one warhead. I realize that nobody likes nuclear weapons. But I don’t think anyone will like nuclear blackmail either.

 

[Monte_RCMS]

There are other uses for nuclear weapons, such as using a very small nuke [available since the 1950’s] to kill a submarine. Conventional explosives cannot guarantee a kill with one shot. Or with many shots. Even with guided torpedoes.

Soviet doctrine was to use nuclear torpedoes or short range fast cruise missiles to kill our aircraft carriers.

If you want to survive, you need to be able to fight.

 

[1AugustSon7]

I’ve looked into all this a lot. My conclusion is that the Church is generally against the whole concept of nuclear weapons, the arms race, and the usage of weapons of mass destruction.

BUT, my question is whether there is an exception regarding the usage.

Scenario: If a nation starts bombarding (say) the United States with nuclear weapons, is the US justified in responding with equal force? What other options are there?

This is, of course, a worst-case-scenario sort of situation as well as being a situation surrounded by evil where it seems “the lesser of two evils” might be the only viable option.

Thanks,
ClemtheCatholic

A nuclear weapon is a mass means of incinerating women and children. Its use against a civilian target is always a cowardly act. It is impossible to justify its use against civilian targets: it MIGHT be moral to sink a naval fleet ay sea with it, for example, though the pollution will eventually come back to haunt you. To employ it is immoral; unfortunately, as in the scenario you gave, we can feel hopeless. But we should have faith: God can stop a nuke and prevent nuclear warfare.

 

[Monte_RCMS]

A nuclear weapon is a mass means of incinerating women and children. Its use against a civilian target is always a cowardly act. It is impossible to justify its use against civilian targets: it MIGHT be moral to sink a naval fleet ay sea with it, for example, though the pollution will eventually come back to haunt you. To employ it is immoral; unfortunately, as in the scenario you gave, we can feel hopeless. But we should have faith: God can stop a nuke and prevent nuclear warfare.

It’s too late to stuff the genie back in the bottle.

The use of nuclear energy for weapons purposes was discovered in the 1940’s and refined in the 1950’s. The vast majority of nuclear weapons are relatively small and are ideal for taking out small individual difficult targets, such as individual submarines.

As the accuracy of delivery systems has improved, the explosive yields have been designed down … so that the large yield weapons of the 1950’s and 1960’s have been scrapped … replaced by low-yield, precisely delivered weapons intended to take out specific military targets.

In addition the U.S. inventory of nuclear weapons has been decreased by 80% since its peak. And the U.S. inventory of delivery systems has similarly been decreased.

However, no one knows what the size of the inventory of nuclear weapons is of other countries such as Russia, China, Pakistan, India, Iran and North Korea.

The statement that a nuclear weapon is a mass means of incinerating women and children is an inflammatory and inaccurate statement. Attacking women and children is not a military objective … an absolute waste of time and effort and are not a valid military target whereas a missile silo or a submarine or a bomber base are valid military targets. Nuclear weapons are too expensive and too difficult to deliver to waste them against non-military targets.

There are cultures that DO specifically select and target women and children … such as was carried out at the Boston Bombing or at the World Trade Center. But that’s not the culture of the United States.

Here is an excellent current book on the subject.

If anyone wants to discuss this subject, they need to do the reading:

Sleepwalking-Bomb-John-C-Wohlstetter

amazon.com/Sleepwalking-Bomb-John-C-Wohlstetter/dp/1936599066

letterfromthecapitol.com/ … Wohlstetter’s newsletter

 

[Monte_RCMS]

What about Hiroshima and Nagasaki which were both civilian cities and targets?

Both Hiroshima and Nagasaki as targets had military objectives … people do disagree …but, among other things, one was a major military headquarters which would have led the fight had we followed the plan and landed our troops in Japan in a contested landing … and the other was a seaport that brought military supplies from production facilities in Korea.

There is a separate set of discussion threads here on Catholic Answers that thoroughly and exhaustively discuss Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Usually the subject gets a lot of attention in August.

Here is a post I looked up; if this subject is of interest, might want to consider doing a search for similar posts by this poster … GKC

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=728443&highlight=hiroshima

GKC
Senior Member

Join Date: May 25, 2004
Posts: 7,941
Re: Should we have dropped Atomic bombs on Japan
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ghosty
It wasn’t just from you’re posts, but you definitely helped solidify my understanding and I thank you for it.

I’ve not come across anything that specifically says that a high casualty rate was aimed for, which is why I said I don’t know to what extent it is true, but it’s the obvious implication of all the plans and “clean speak”. After all, without a high casualty rate the proposed “shock and awe” wouldn’t have been so shocking or awful.

What documents have you come across that detail the casualty rates that were intended/anticipated? I’m very interested in learning more about that angle specifically.

Peace and God bless!

There was no specific anticipated casualty figure I know of (not to say that there were none, and I may even have read and forgotten them), save that it was hoped to be high. There was no experience with dropping the things, at all, not to mention over built up areas. What was hoped for was as big an effect as possible (hence the original aiming point of the Nagasaki bomb, which would have been more deadly than the actual hypocenter), to equate to the multi-plane, multi-day raids on Tokyo, for example. The contrast of the 1 plane, 1 bomb, to 500 plane raids over several days, was the shock and awe hoped for. It took two, and some behind the scenes maneuvering by the peace faction, but it worked.

In fact, among the things hoped for in Hiroshima was a successful drop, period. No one had exploded a uranium bomb, in any sense. It was expected to work, but…Imagine if the bomb had not exploded, floated down to land at the T crossing of the Aioi bridge, and wound up in the hands of Dr. Yoshio Nishima. It was terra incognito. Recall what Oppenheimer had told Marshall could be done with the next production bombs, with respect to OLYMPIC, and what Marshall was then planning to do. Nobody knew.

As always, Frank/DOWNFALL is the first man to read, though I recently finished Coffey’s IMPERIAL TRAGEDY, which is illuminating.

GKC

 

[Monte_RCMS]

Thanks for those links. Yes, this quote from Kyl in the WSJ certainly worries me:
“Intercontinental ballistic missiles are the first leg of the triad. Although Russia is preparing to field a new generation of intercontinental ballistic missiles (one type of which can carry as many as 15 warheads), the Obama administration is still studying whether to develop its own modernized ICBMs.”

U.S. ICBM’s now have only one warhead. I realize that nobody likes nuclear weapons. But I don’t think anyone will like nuclear blackmail either.

Current readers might not realize [before their time] that U.S. ICBM’s used to have as many as ten warheads, but the U.S. downsized to one per missile.

The ten warheads were MIRV’s and MARVs … meaning that although launched from one rocket, they could hit ten targets, as an example.

There were many different concepts. At the time, back in the 1960’s and thereabouts “everyone” knew about them and discussed them.

But more recently the subject and the details have vanished off the front lines of discussion.

There is a place where interested readers can find useful information.

There are archives of “The Chart Page” … years of monthly displays of relevant information.

airforcemag.com/MagazineArchive/Pages/ChartPageArchive.aspx

And along the left edge there are buttons for other useful archived information.

 

[GKC]

Both Hiroshima and Nagasaki as targets had military objectives … people do disagree …but, among other things, one was a major military headquarters which would have led the fight had we followed the plan and landed our troops in Japan in a contested landing … and the other was a seaport that brought military supplies from production facilities in Korea.

There is a separate set of discussion threads here on Catholic Answers that thoroughly and exhaustively discuss Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Usually the subject gets a lot of attention in August.

Here is a post I looked up; if this subject is of interest, might want to consider doing a search for similar posts by this poster … GKC

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=728443&highlight=hiroshima

GKC
Senior Member

Join Date: May 25, 2004
Posts: 7,941
Re: Should we have dropped Atomic bombs on Japan
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ghosty
It wasn’t just from you’re posts, but you definitely helped solidify my understanding and I thank you for it.

I’ve not come across anything that specifically says that a high casualty rate was aimed for, which is why I said I don’t know to what extent it is true, but it’s the obvious implication of all the plans and “clean speak”. After all, without a high casualty rate the proposed “shock and awe” wouldn’t have been so shocking or awful.

What documents have you come across that detail the casualty rates that were intended/anticipated? I’m very interested in learning more about that angle specifically.

Peace and God bless!

There was no specific anticipated casualty figure I know of (not to say that there were none, and I may even have read and forgotten them), save that it was hoped to be high. There was no experience with dropping the things, at all, not to mention over built up areas. What was hoped for was as big an effect as possible (hence the original aiming point of the Nagasaki bomb, which would have been more deadly than the actual hypocenter), to equate to the multi-plane, multi-day raids on Tokyo, for example. The contrast of the 1 plane, 1 bomb, to 500 plane raids over several days, was the shock and awe hoped for. It took two, and some behind the scenes maneuvering by the peace faction, but it worked.

In fact, among the things hoped for in Hiroshima was a successful drop, period. No one had exploded a uranium bomb, in any sense. It was expected to work, but…Imagine if the bomb had not exploded, floated down to land at the T crossing of the Aioi bridge, and wound up in the hands of Dr. Yoshio Nishima. It was terra incognito. Recall what Oppenheimer had told Marshall could be done with the next production bombs, with respect to OLYMPIC, and what Marshall was then planning to do. Nobody knew.

As always, Frank/DOWNFALL is the first man to read, though I recently finished Coffey’s IMPERIAL TRAGEDY, which is illuminating.

GKC

Hi, there.

Over the years, I think you’ll find around 500+ plus such posts, over my name. It is, as you know, a long time hobby of mine. Most recently purchased FROM ROOSEVELT TO TRUMANOTSDAM,HIROSHIMA,AND THE COLD WAR by Fr. Wilson Miscamble, C.S.C. Like his THE MOST CONTROVERSIAL DECISION, TRUMAN, THE ATOMIC BOMBS AND THE DEFEAT OF JAPAN, well worth reading. Nothing tops Frank, though.

I’ve not read this thread yet, and may not do so. As I’ve said before, you can’t empty the ocean with a teaspoon. And I do hate posting on this subject.

GKC

Added: Ok, read the thread. Nothing to require me to climb back into the saddle again.

Though my 20 year AF career did give me some insight into the general topic here, it’s not my bete-noire. Carry on, folks.